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Obama adopts the Elizabeth Warren collectivist line
This evil leftist, who happens to be the president of the United States, takes the unexceptionable fact that we have all benefited from other people and from the entire society in which we live,
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive….
in order to advance his agenda of denigrating free enterprise and imposing statist egalitarian slavery on all of us.
But he goes further than merely stating that individual achievement takes place within a society that provides the laws, infrastructure, and various kinds of help that make the achievement possible. He says:
If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
He’s canceling out all individual achievement, saying that all achievement is collective. This is right out of the speeches of Ayn Rand’s villain Elsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead.
Also, who is that “somebody else” that made it happen? If no one makes his own achievements happen, then isn’t the help from the “somebody else” who did make it happen also an illusion?
Again, that’s right out of The Fountainhead, with its theme of the Second Hander. In a society consisting of nothing but Second Handers, which the left wants to make us believe that we are, there are no real persons, no real achievers, but only non-entities, only mirrors reflecting other mirrors ad infinitum. But somehow (just like Orwell’s “some animals are more equal than others), some Second Handers, the ones who didn’t actually produce anything, are privileged over other Second Handers, the ones who did produce something.
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Mike B. writes:
Obama also said yesterday in Roanoke, Virginia: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life,” etc.
In that case if you want to follow his yellow brick road thinking all the way back to the beginning, “There was Higgs boson somewhere in your life.”
LA replies:
Right! We haven’t built or invented or created anything on our own. Without the Higgs boson which created all the matter in the universe, we wouldn’t have existed, and therefore we wouldn’t have been able to produce any wealth. From which it follows … from which it follows … that producers don’t deserve the wealth they’ve produced through their efforts, that private wealth is unjust, and that we must have a government-controlled economy assuring equality for everyone.
Michael S. writes:
When I first read The Fountainhead and in Atlas Shrugged as a teenager the villains seemed like caricatures drawn far too broadly. They took everything Ayn Rand hated to ludicrous, unbelievable levels, so that the sane reader couldn’t imagine anyone in his right mind actually saying such things. This lack of credibility spoiled the artistic effect. It is sad and depressing that what used to be laughably unrealistic is now, in the real world, inflicted on us constantly.
The same thing is true of Orwellian doublethink and doubletalk. The very fact that Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm exist and are widely read and respected ought to have inoculated us against the kind of things Orwell skewers. Instead, the very things Orwell was attacking are becoming more and more common.
LA replies:
Those books used to be widely read and respected, when I was a kid. I think a majority of intelligent adolescents read Nineteen Eighty-Four, and almost as many read Brave New World. An understanding of their lessons was a commonplace in our culture. I don’t think they are widely read and respected any more.
Paul K. writes:
The flaw in the president’s argument is obvious: successful people certainly benefit from the existing infrastructure and the assistance of other people. But of course those benefits are available to everyone. The fact is, only some people are sufficiently smart, capable, and enterprising to take advantage of them, and for that they are rewarded.
In this deplorable speech, Obama sounds like one of those black rabble rousers who rail against hard-working Asians for establishing successful businesses in inner-city neighborhoods, as if in doing so they’re depriving blacks of something that’s rightfully theirs.
Even this early in the campaign, Obama is displaying his hard-left core: decreeing amnesty for illegal aliens; talking about how it’s the public sector that needs help, not the private sector; and now this attack on individual achievement. Is he coming off the rails? I can’t believe this will sit well with the public.
LA replies:
What public?
Hannon writes:
Obama perverts the idea of the natural interdependence of all Americans into the idea that true independence is impossible. It is spectacularly wrong-headed to say that our gregariousness is a form of oppositional conflict. It is instead a form of cooperation where certain norms, on a daily basis, are taken as given: the value of the dollar, telecommunications, food supply and so forth. For the POTUS to deform this existential idea into a political bludgeon is despicable and meant to exacerbate class and race hatreds. In this it will probably succeed.
If he had spoken his true thoughts with complete frankness, might have said this instead:
If you are successful, along the line the government gave you help. There was a great social worker somewhere in your life. The Democrats helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive without having to work or participate productively in society …
Bjorn writes:
From BHO’s speech on who “creates a business” (since it isn’t the business owner):
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive….
Sworn to uphold the greatest political system ever known to man, based on men’s God-given unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, your president is now stating that these rights are not unalienable but man-made, and that only by the grace of “society” are we “allowed to thrive.” This is exceedingly dangerous language, Larry—may God be with you in the coming election.
LA writes: I think the most cogent criticism of Obama in this thread so far is Paul K.’s:
The flaw in the president’s argument is obvious: successful people certainly benefit from the existing infrastructure and the assistance of other people. But of course those benefits are available to everyone. The fact is, only some people are sufficiently smart, capable, and enterprising to take advantage of them, and for that they are rewarded.
Right. In the same way, we all benefit from the Higgs boson, which created matter, without which, in addition to there being no universe and no us, there would have been no raw materials with which to produce oil derricks and heavy machinery and CT scanners and cars and clothing and computer software and hairspray and the gift items industry. But of the entire human race who all benefit from the existence of matter, some people have used matter to create great wealth, others have used matter to create moderate wealth, others have used matter to produce modest wealth, and others have not used matter to produce any wealth at all. Thus the truth is, not that we are all equally Second Handers because we all benefit from the existence of matter, but that we differ profoundly in the ways in which we have used the matter from which we all benefit.
Paul K. writes:
Doesn’t it sound as though he’s just rambling incoherently at this point?
There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
Here’s another thing we don’t do on our own—move a couch. I mean, imagine if everyone had to move a couch by himself? That would be a hard way to move a couch. No, you call on a fellow American to come over and help you move it. He might be a government worker, perhaps a teacher or a social worker who happens to live nearby, and you email him on the Internet that government research created. In America, when we succeed at moving couches, we succeed by doing it together, and government has a role to play in that.
LA replies:
And therefore the government should own us and everything we create and produce.
LA writes:
Here, perhaps, is the ultimate sin of leftism in general and of Obama in particular: Obama treats the people who, through their efforts, have created wealth and all sorts of benefits to society, as though they were parasites. In short, he treats good as evil.
And this, according to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, 3:22-30, is the ultimate sin, the sin for which there is no forgiveness.
Throughout the first three chapters of Mark, Jesus has been healing people of sicknesses and of demonic possession. But the scribes think that his power over devils means that he himself is of the devil:
22 And the scribes which came
down from Jerusalem said, He hath
Beelzebub, and by the prince of the
devils casteth he out devils.
23 And he called them unto him,
and said unto them in parables, How
can Satan cast out Satan?
24 And if a kingdom be divided
against itself, that kingdom cannot
stand.
25 And if a house be divided
against itself, that house cannot
stand.
26 And if Satan rise up against
himself, and be divided, he cannot
stand, but hath an end.
27 No man can enter into a strong
man’s house, and spoil his goods,
except he will first bind the
strong man; and then he will spoil
his house.
[LA comments: Meaning, only a good man can bind the devil and rob his house. Only the opposite of evil can defeat evil.]
28 Verily I say unto you, All sins
shall be forgiven unto the sons of
men, and blasphemies wherewith
soever they shall blaspheme:
29 But he that shall blaspheme
against the Holy Ghost hath never
forgiveness, but is in danger of
eternal damnation:
30 Because they said, He hath an
unclean spirit.
In the context of this scene, what does it mean, to blaspheme against the Holy Ghost? It means to portray the good as evil. That is what the scribes are doing, portraying Jesus’ act of good in healing people, as something coming from the devil. And to portray good as evil, Jesus tells them, is such a grave sin that there is no forgiveness for it.
Moreover, this warning that Jesus gives the scribes is so important, that he does something that he does nowhere else in the Gospels: “he called them unto him.” He summons the scribes in order to warn them away from this terrible sin. All of Jesus’ other confrontations with his opponents take place when they approach him and challenge him. In this scene alone does Jesus call his opponents unto him. Why? Because he is concerned for their souls which they are putting in danger by claiming that Jesus, who in reality is doing only good, “hath an unclean spirit.”
And when leftists claim that the producers of the goods from which we all benefit are parasites on society, they are committing a similar sin.
And, in the same way, when the left spreads the propaganda that the white West, the most beneficial civilization the world has ever known, is a monstrous brew of anti-human oppression, they are committing the sin that hath no forgiveness.
Paul K. writes:
You wrote:
“Obama treats the people who, through their efforts, have created wealth and all sorts of benefits to society, as though they were parasites. In short, he treats good as evil.”
Brilliant. Absolutely crystal clear.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 16, 2012 06:57 PM | Send
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